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    A Difficult Problem
    A Difficult Problem
    A Difficult Problem
    Ebook30 pages28 minutes

    A Difficult Problem

    By Anna Green

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    About this ebook

    A woman receives a letter from her husband saying he will be home in five days time. But it is his death notice that arrives first. And it is cut out and pinned to a small cushion. As she wonders at it, a telegram arrives saying her husband was found dead that morning. She goes to Philadelphia to check...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateAug 8, 2017
    A Difficult Problem
    Author

    Anna Green

    Anna Green is Associate Professor in the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies at Victoria University of Wellington

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      Book preview

      A Difficult Problem - Anna Green

      2017

      All rights reserved

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      I.

      II.

      I.

      A LADY to see you, sir.

      I looked up and was at once impressed by the grace and beauty of the person thus introduced to me.

      Is there anything I can do to serve you? I asked, rising.

      She cast me a child-like look full of trust and candor as she seated herself in the chair I pointed out to her.

      I believe so, I hope so, she earnestly assured me. I—I am in great trouble. I have just lost my husband—but it is not that. It is the slip of paper I found on my dresser, and which—which——

      She was trembling violently and her words were fast becoming incoherent. I calmed her and asked her to relate her story just as it had happened; and after a few minutes of silent struggle she succeeded in collecting herself sufficiently to respond with some degree of connection and self-possession.

      "I have been married six months. My name is Lucy Holmes. For the last few weeks my husband and myself have been living in an apartment house on Fifty-ninth Street, and as we had not a care in the world, we were very happy till Mr. Holmes was called away on business to Philadelphia. This was two weeks ago. Five days later I received an affectionate letter from him, in which he promised to come back the next day; and the news so delighted me that I accepted an invitation to the theater from some intimate friends of ours. The next morning I naturally felt fatigued and rose late; but I was very cheerful, for I expected my husband at noon. And now comes the perplexing mystery. In the course of dressing myself I stepped to my bureau, and seeing a small newspaper-slip attached to the cushion by a pin, I drew it off and read it. It was a death notice, and my hair rose and my limbs failed me as I took in its fatal and incredible words.

      "‘Died this day at the Colonnade, James Forsythe De Witt Holmes. New York papers please copy.’

      "James Forsythe De Witt Holmes was my husband, and his last letter,

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